The King's Compassion is Conquest Text: Luke 7:11-17
Introduction: Two Processions
We live in a world that is fundamentally shaped by two great processions. The first is the procession of man, and it is always a funeral procession. It marches from the cradle to the grave, and its drumbeat is the rhythm of sin, decay, and death. This is the parade of Adam's race, a long, sorrowful line of hearses stretching from the gates of Eden to the end of the age. Every newspaper, every hospital, every cemetery is a monument to this grim reality. The world, in its rebellion against God, has made a covenant with death, and it marches with a determined, tragic loyalty toward its own ruin.
But there is another procession. This is the procession of the King. It is the advance of the kingdom of God, and it marches in the opposite direction. It does not march toward the grave, but out of it. Its drumbeat is the rhythm of resurrection, and its banner is life. This is the procession of the Lord Jesus Christ, and wherever He goes, death is thrown into reverse. These two processions are at war. They cannot coexist peacefully, for one is the kingdom of darkness and the other is the Kingdom of light. Every interaction between them is a confrontation, a battle.
Our modern sensibilities, soaked as they are in sentimentalism, want to read a story like this one and see only a tender-hearted Jesus moved by a sad scene. We want to domesticate His compassion, to make it a soft, gentle feeling, something like our own pity. But this is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of Christ's compassion. His compassion is not a passive emotion; it is an act of sovereign power. It is the compassion of a king, and when a king has compassion, armies move. Christ's compassion is an act of war. It is an invasion. When Jesus Christ confronts a funeral, He does not merely offer condolences. He crashes the party. He seizes the guest of honor, kicks down the door of the underworld, and drags him back out into the sunlight. This is not gentle sympathy; this is holy aggression. This is D-Day in the village of Nain.
In this brief account, we see the collision of these two kingdoms. We see the King's compassion as an instrument of conquest, His authority over the final enemy, and the only proper response to such a display of raw, divine power.
The Text
And it happened that soon afterwards He went to a city called Nain, and His disciples were going along with Him, accompanied by a large crowd. Now as He approached the gate of the city, behold, a dead man was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a sizeable crowd from the city was with her. And when the Lord saw her, He felt compassion for her and said to her, "Do not cry." And He came up and touched the coffin, and the bearers came to a halt. And He said, "Young man, I say to you, arise!" And the dead man sat up and began to speak. And Jesus gave him back to his mother. And fear gripped them all, and they began glorifying God, saying, "A great prophet has arisen among us!" and, "God has visited His people!" And this report concerning Him went out all over Judea and in all the surrounding district.
(Luke 7:11-17 LSB)
The Collision of Kingdoms (v. 11-12)
We begin with the setting of the stage in verses 11 and 12.
"And it happened that soon afterwards He went to a city called Nain, and His disciples were going along with Him, accompanied by a large crowd. Now as He approached the gate of the city, behold, a dead man was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a sizeable crowd from the city was with her." (Luke 7:11-12 LSB)
Here we have the two processions. Jesus is coming into the city of Nain with His followers, a "large crowd." They are the procession of life, following the Prince of Life. At the very same time, coming out of the city gate, is another large crowd. They are the procession of death. And the camera of Luke's gospel zooms in on the heart of the tragedy. The one being carried out is a dead man, but the details are piled up to show us the utter devastation death leaves in its wake. He is the "only son of his mother." And to complete the picture of desolation, "she was a widow."
In that culture, this was the end of the line. A widow with no husband and now no son was destitute. She had no provider, no protector, no heir, no future. Her name was now cut off in Israel. Death had not just taken her son; it had taken everything. This is what sin does. This is the paycheck that the devil signs. He is a murderer from the beginning, and his great ambition is to leave the world full of widows with dead sons. This funeral procession is a microcosm of the fallen world, a perfect picture of the human race apart from Christ: hopeless, helpless, and headed for the dirt.
Notice the location. This collision happens "at the gate of the city." The city gate was the place of commerce, of justice, of public life. This is not a private grief hidden away in a back room. This is a public confrontation between the Lord of Life and the Prince of Death, right in the town square. There is no neutrality here. One kingdom will give way to the other.
Sovereign Compassion (v. 13)
Now we come to the heart of the action, the motivation for the miracle.
"And when the Lord saw her, He felt compassion for her and said to her, 'Do not cry.'" (Luke 7:13 LSB)
Luke makes a point of using the title "the Lord" here. This is not just Jesus the kind teacher. This is the Kyrios, the sovereign ruler of all things, the covenant God of Israel in the flesh. And when the Lord sees her, He has compassion. The Greek word is visceral. It means He was moved in His bowels, in His guts. This was not a detached, clinical pity. He felt the jagged horror of this woman's grief and the brutal ugliness of death.
But we must not stop there. His compassion is immediately followed by a command: "Do not cry." Now, if you or I were to walk up to a grieving mother at her only son's funeral and tell her to stop crying, it would be the height of cruelty. It would be an insult. Why? Because we have no power to fix the situation. Our words are empty. But when Jesus says it, it is not a suggestion. It is not a platitude. It is a royal decree. He is not dismissing her grief; He is announcing its end. He is telling her not to weep because He is about to remove the very reason for her weeping. This is the compassion of a king. It is a compassion that does not just feel, it acts. It does not just sympathize, it conquers. He is about to declare war on the thing that is making her cry.
The Authoritative Word (v. 14-15)
The King's compassion now moves into open warfare.
"And He came up and touched the coffin, and the bearers came to a halt. And He said, 'Young man, I say to you, arise!' And the dead man sat up and began to speak. And Jesus gave him back to his mother." (Luke 7:14-15 LSB)
Every action here is dripping with authority. First, He touches the coffin, the bier. Under the Mosaic law, touching a dead body or anything associated with it made you ceremonially unclean (Numbers 19:11). But when Jesus touches the unclean, He is not defiled by it; He cleanses it. Death does not contaminate life; Life eradicates death. The flow of power is one way. The bearers stop, recognizing that a higher authority has just interrupted their sad task.
Then comes the divine fiat. "Young man, I say to you, arise!" Notice the personal, direct command. He speaks to a corpse as though it can hear Him, because in His presence, it can. He does not ask the Father to raise him. He does not perform an elaborate ritual. With the same authority that spoke light into existence in Genesis 1, He speaks life into this dead body. This is the performative Word of God. When He says "Arise," reality rearranges itself to obey. Death cannot hold a man when the Author of Life tells him to get up.
The result is immediate and undeniable. "The dead man sat up and began to speak." This is not some shadowy resuscitation. This is full-blown, talking, thinking, living life. And then the final, beautiful act: "And Jesus gave him back to his mother." This is covenantal restoration. He does not just perform a power stunt; He restores a family. He undoes the work of the curse. He gives back what death had stolen. This is a foretaste of the great restoration, when Christ will present all His redeemed people, raised and glorified, to the Father.
The Proper Response: Fear and Glory (v. 16-17)
The crowds have just witnessed a direct act of God, a tear in the fabric of their fallen reality. Their response is exactly right.
"And fear gripped them all, and they began glorifying God, saying, 'A great prophet has arisen among us!' and, 'God has visited His people!' And this report concerning Him went out all over Judea and in all the surrounding district." (Luke 7:16-17 LSB)
The first response is "fear." This is not the cowering terror of a slave before a tyrant. This is holy awe. This is the proper human reaction to standing in the presence of raw, unmediated divine power. It is the fear that Isaiah felt when he saw the Lord high and lifted up. It is the fear that makes you take your shoes off because you realize you are on holy ground. They understood that what they had just seen was not natural. It was supernatural. A generation like ours, which has lost the fear of God, cannot truly worship Him. We have tried to make God safe, but the God who can raise the dead is not safe. He is good, but He is not safe.
This fear immediately gives way to glorifying God. The fear of God is the beginning of worship. They correctly identify what has happened. First, they say, "A great prophet has arisen among us!" They are thinking of Elijah, who raised the widow of Zarephath's son, and Elisha, who raised the Shunammite's son. They recognize that Jesus stands in that prophetic line, but He is clearly greater. But their second conclusion is even more profound: "God has visited His people!"
This phrase is covenantal dynamite. It echoes back to the Exodus, when God saw the affliction of His people in Egypt and came down to deliver them (Exodus 4:31). It is the language of redemption, of divine invasion. They are saying that God Himself has come down, that He has personally intervened to rescue His people. They may not have understood the full implications of the incarnation, but they knew this was not just another prophet. This was God on the move. And because of this, the report, the gospel, went out everywhere. A display of the kingdom's power is the fuel for the kingdom's expansion.
Conclusion: The Visitation of God
This story is more than a historical account of a wonderful miracle. It is a paradigm for the gospel. Every single one of us, apart from Christ, is in that funeral procession. We are spiritually dead, being carried out to our final doom. We are as unable to help ourselves as that young man on the bier. Our mothers, the church, weep for us. The world is a graveyard.
But the Lord of life has crashed the funeral. In the gospel, Jesus Christ comes to the gate of our dead city. He sees our hopeless condition, and He is moved with sovereign compassion. He touches our unclean lives, not to be defiled, but to make us clean. And He speaks His authoritative, life-giving Word into our dead hearts: "Arise."
Regeneration is nothing less than a resurrection. It is not a process of self-improvement. It is a sovereign act of God whereby He makes dead things live. He speaks, and we who were dead in trespasses and sins sit up and begin to speak His praises. He then gives us back to our mother, the Church, restored and alive.
This is why the gospel is such good news. It is not advice on how to climb out of the coffin. It is the announcement that the King has come, and He has ripped the lid off the coffin and commanded us to live. He has visited His people. And because He has done this, we have a glorious and certain hope. The same power that raised this boy, and that raised Jesus Himself from the tomb, is at work in us. And it is this power that is currently conquering the world. Christ is marching through history, and one by one, He is emptying the hearses. The final enemy to be destroyed is death, and this story from Nain is a down payment, a guarantee, that on the last day, He will shout His command over the graveyard of this world, and all His people will arise. The funeral procession of Adam will be swallowed up forever by the victory parade of the King.